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I need your help guys, I want to get into some heavier metal but I don't really know what I'm looking for. I'm very picky when it comes to metal and most things I hear don't cut the mustard or just aren't worth listening too more that once.

The only metal I listen to at the moment is all the NWoBHM bands (up the Irons), In Flames (old stuff) and that Kvelertak band someone posted on the first page (thanks for that, really enjoying the album). Pretty much everything else that was posted just sounds pretty samey and it wore me out after listening to a few songs.

Apart from the bands mentioned above my MP3 player is full of drum n bass and trance and I need some more metal to even it out. I don't really know what the criteria for a song of metal should be for me to consider it good. But from what I've heard, I don't enjoy hair metal, stoner metal (surprisingly) or metal that's too depressing, it has to be upbeat or Im not so intreasted.

Let's all do the sign of the hammer and rock out to the trad metal attack!

Bathory is a go-to band, anyone who's into metal should own at least one album. Maybe not Requiem and Octagon but any of the rest will do. Under the Sign Of Evil and Hammerheart are my picks.

The Gates Of Slumber play some very doom-tinged metal and are elephantine with heaviness. It's an atmosphere thing rather than a being slow kind of thing so it's doom metal done right and there's some fast songs to get your battle rage going. I'd suggest Conqueror as an album of choice but Hymns Of Blood and Thunder is the one that I ended up liking more. Not particularly upbeat but not as miserable as a lot of other bands that I could spend all day name dropping.

Ironsword do a similar thing but are more power metal than doom and write about Cthulhu as well as Conan (great pairing that) and have a stronger strain of Manilla Road going through them which is just wonderful. When I say power metal I mean power metal, no wimpiness here and no keyboards.

Speaking of Manilla Road, more people need to be into them. Vocals might be a hurdle at first but they'll grow on you. I remember being really turned off when I first heard them but now they are my favourite band. I listed a bunch of their songs many pages back which was an attempt to up the hammers and get Manilla Road fever going UIH but that didn't really work because Haunted Palace is on the box and I see no circle pits forming.

Doomsword also really like Manilla Road (and Omen and Cirith Ungol and Manowar, oh my) but seem to like Bathory even more as time went on. Two cuts, or rather hammer blows, from the first two albums below.

Usurper split a while back but were one of the few bands who didn't suffer any wimps during the nineties. Trad through and through but with that black metal tinge that all the kids are down with. Diabolosis, Skeletal Season and the Threshold Of the Usurper EP are what you should go for as their other albums don't quite capture the (metal) magic that those first three did.

All the thrash bands that I'm into these days sound like they were around more than twenty years ago so I'll cut the bullshit and just pop two bands who were around more than twenty years ago who still sound better than nearly everything done today in here instead and some speed metal even though I've already posted the video here because it roolz and it's the theme song for this thread.